


Semblance Of Control

by Glacial_guillotine



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, Fainting, Fake Sympathy, Feeling Violated Sucks, Fever, Gamora Being a Badass, Healing, Hurt Peter Quill, I dont know how to tag, Imprisonment, Loving Gamora, Maybe Power Left Over From Ego?, Mentions of A Purple Grape Looking Bitch, Mission Gone Wrong, Mock Execution, Panic, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Restraints, Sad Peter, Some Kinda Mist?, Space Nachos, Torture, Traps, Weird powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 04:12:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15380379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glacial_guillotine/pseuds/Glacial_guillotine
Summary: It was obviously a really, really bad idea to take a job on a plant full of psychics. A catastrophic one, rather. That was Peter's bad.-------A mission goes wrong, and they all get trapped, and their captor takes some serious revenge.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Ah jeez this is a long one! I don't really know what to put for this fic but I'm proud of myself for writing this much; it's multichaptered for once! 
> 
> Please enjoy and lemme know what you think!

It was obviously a really, really bad idea to take a job on a plant full of psychics. A catastrophic one, rather. That was Peter's bad.

When every enemy could see you coming, whether it was through the second set of eyes nestled in the back of their heads or their dime store fortune-telling abilities, it felt like they were destined to fail from the very beginning. Not a second after they had snuck into the maze-like lair, an alarm pierced through the air and the hallway turned a bright danger red from emergency lights on the ceiling.

"Run!" Gamora shouted.

Rocket shot down the hallway, ironically, like a rocket. The rest of them soon followed, Peter splitting off with Rocket to the left to access the control room and Gamora and Drax to the right. They were to distract guards and cause a scene to try and offset the Draziri's intuition. They could easily identify intrusion, but not the intent of it, which the Guardians were using to their advantage. Peter thought it to be a smart idea at the time.

The person that hired them to retrieve information was fairly vague on what the information was, exactly. Peter had just assumed it was classified, or some real underground shady shit that, really, they didn't want to know about. They had a chip that served as a makeshift flash drive and all they had to do with it was simply plug it into their computers, and they were golden.

Gamora slid up against the wall next to the first door, making sure her gun was off the safety and to observe how many Draziri were inside the room. Their job was to distract, so this fight would have to be strategic.

She gave a final nod to Drax, who proceeded to kick open the door and shout into the room, raising his gun and firing shots into the ceiling. She followed, shaking her head, and aimed at a guard that was approaching her.

Gamora brought her leg up to kick her opponent and spun when she heard a shout from behind, smashing her elbow into what she assumed was a nose. She brought her gun down onto the first guard's stomach to put him out of commission for a few minutes, but not so long that they would catch onto their distracting tactic. Drax was spotted out of the corner of her eye battling a few fewer soldiers than her, maneuvering so they would crash into each other. He laughed joyfully and even she had to crack a smile.

Minutes passed and alarms were now blaring from the speakers above them, and Gamora was starting to get nervous. Peter and Rocket were to report back to Drax and Gamora when they were finished with the tech stuff, and it shouldn't have taken this long, really. Twenty minutes tops. There was a tiny itch in the back of her mind that told her something was...off. They had finally resorted to finishing off most of the guards originally placed in the room, expecting more to be coming and not wanting to be overpowered.

No more guards came, however. Gamora sidestepped an approaching stun gun and time slowed. It felt like pieces of a puzzle coming together, she could finally see the whole picture.

The Draziri were a smart people; this coupled with the ability to somewhat predict the future, they were dangerous and conniving and one had to be careful in conspiring against them.

The guards they fought had no guns.

No knives had been pulled, and if Gamora hadn't known better, she would have said they had been almost too easy of targets.

"Drax, we need to go find Peter and Rocket!" She shouted. Their backs were to each other, each fighting their own opponent.

"We have almost killed them all, do you wish to abandon the-"

He didn't get to finish his sentence, as the room was plunged into a blackness, the only light being the sickly yellow glow emanating from the alarm speakers. The alarms themselves had taken on a higher tone, a screech akin to a bird in the desert. A predatory vulture, maybe.

She was starting to feel like that metaphorical vulture's pray, and to be honest, she absolutely hated it. It had taken less than a minute to go from the one in charge of life to the one not.

A motion in front of her made her jump and raise her gun, but the guard was simply pulling something out of the wall. She watched in confusion as she strapped something resembling a mask over her head, straps secured around her skull and around her upturned mouth.

A mask? Why would she need a...

For the second time that day, Gamora shouted, "Run!"

She started sprinting down the hall they had come from so fast it gave her whiplash. She could hear Drax's pounding steps a few paces behind her. At least he had listened.

"Peter!" She again shouted into her walkie-talkie, as Quill had dubbed them. "Abort mission! It's a trap!"

As they rounded a corner, she caught sight of a red jacket and some fur heading toward them. They were sprinting, and oddly, Peter had his mask activated while Rocket held a furry paw over his mouth and nose. They paused to look around at all the hallways spreading off from the room and startled slightly when seeing their friends. Peter was relieved to see Gamora and Drax, and even more so to see they were unharmed.

"There's this fuckin' mist following us," Peter yelled as they met in the middle of the large domed room.

"Mist?" Gamora repeated at hearing this.

Rocket scampered around the room, glancing down hallways as he went. There had to have been at least ten possible ways to go, and none of them had any idea which way was the right one to get to their ship. "Yeah, mist! You're hearin' right."

"Is it pink?" Drax questioned. Gamora shot him a funny look after having finished checking the power left in her gun.

"Yeah, how did you know?" Peter asked as he turned to his grey teammate.

"Because it's right there." Drax pointed, shooting his electro-gun into the (yes, bright pink) mist emerging from where Peter and Rocket had come from.

"Shooting it isn't going to help, you idiot!" Rocket took after Gamora, who was already running. Peter yanked on his shoulder to pull him away, proceeding to sprint down one of the hallways Gamora had chosen to go down. This turned out to be a bad decision, however, as a familiar pink spread out before them, causing them to turn around.

Gamora could tell it was getting harder to breathe, the pink barely getting into her throat. Maybe they could.. get out through a vent or something.. maybe...

Pink suddenly and completely surrounded them, and she coughed trying to rid her lungs of whatever poison was in the air. She could feel the rest of her team struggling with staying upright -she was having trouble with it herself-, something about the pink made it hard to know what was up and what was down. In a last-ditch attempt to escape, she called Peter's name, her voice scratchy.

The last thing she saw before passing out was Peter's masked face emerging toward her from the cloud, hands reaching out to pull her up from the ground.   
-

Peter thought Gamora's body mods would help her fight off this mist, but he turned out to be wrong. If he had known, he would have thrown off the mask in a second to give it to her, just like he had all those months ago above Knowhere. But he hadn't, he doesn't think it would have helped much anyway by how dizzy he was suddenly feeling.

Then his arms are being pulled back by masked Draziri guards. He struggled, yanked at his arms, but they had already put the outer space version of handcuffs over his wrists. He watched as they did the same to his unconscious friends, and he screamed at them to get off, to just let them leave if they promised to never come back.

"Ahh, they're here. Right on time." All fell silent as a figure emerged from the shadows, an ominous cloaked shape floating through the now dissipating mist. Its attention seemed to fix on Peter.

"Still awake, hmm?" The figure hummed, and the guards shifted their gaze downwards.

"It's this mask, your highness." The guy holding Peter against the wall was the one to speak, his voice reverent and mouselike in comparison.

Grey mottled fingers reached up to trace the lines of his mask, delicately dancing over the sides where it connected to his cheeks, and over the bright red eyes he had always thought were awesome.

"This one is special." A pause. Peter could tell the 'highness' was giving a smile underneath its black shroud. "Bring it to The Cell, 319, and prep it," It traced its long finger down his neck a bit, coming to rest in the curls around his neck.

"As we always do with such guests." It was talking to him now, which was disturbing to him, as it didn't sound like a particularly good thing to be a guest worthy of cell 319.

He tried to sneer, but the last of his vision was overcome with black and white spots, and he felt his head dip, falling onto the cold metal of the floor.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Two for one special then?" He chuckled and was just about to reason with the guy when a screen was whipped around to the front of his face.
> 
> As Peter looked closer, he could see faint scrapes and cuts trailing down her shoulders and cheeks, blood running in rivets, disappearing underneath her clothes. Other than that, she seemed... okay. He hoped to whatever being was out there that she would stay that way, that they all would.
> 
> "This will be so, so much fun."

"It's so good to see you awake."

Peter's eyebrows pulled together, eyes squinting against the bright lights above him. He went to reach up to cover his eyes, but he found that his arms were restrained against something tight and itchy. He pulled, almost in a panic, before taking in the scene around him.

He was definitely in a cell, although it had pristine white walls and lights that even he had to admit was kinda cool looking. Pinks and greens distorted his skin color, and the red of his jacket and pants seemed an almost purple in the lights. UV, was it called?

He jerked in his seat as he noticed the figure standing at his feet, although it wasn't so much of a genderless silhouette as it was before. It was male, he assumed -you never knew when it came to alien races- and had black hair slicked in a braid all the way down it's back. It wore a flowing black cape, the material pooling on the ground, odd and shimmery. Its skin was a grey color, splotches of darker grey and white spotted underneath.

A pain shot through Peter's head and he groaned, "What the hell, man!"

It remained stoic.

"This ain't cool." He looked up to the ceiling. "Listen, we were hired by somebody, I don't even know what we were after, we don't know anything."

The man spoke, his upturned eyes non-blinking and full of something Peter couldn't quite put his finger on. It was almost a madness, a coldly contained insanity that sent chills down Peter's back.

"Yes, 20,000 units, correct?" It moved to stand beside him, dragging its hand up Peter's leg as it went. "Retrieve information using a chip, plug it into the far left port and wait five minutes, 23 seconds before pulling it and leaving. Simple, yes?"

Peter didn't answer, arms tense and mouth slightly open.

"My name is Aeraf, and I know these facts because I was the anonymous customer." It waved its hand dismissively, turning to walk to the corner of the room that Peter couldn't see. There was a clattering of metal, and all of a sudden, he was getting nervous.

"When I heard that the daughter of Thanos," Peter could hear the sneer in his voice, "was near my providence, I knew I had to capitalize on the situation."

Peter felt something cold slip down his neck, and he caught the glint of metal out of the corner of his eye. He froze, remaining as still as he could while the knife glazed over his skin.

He set his teeth and hissed, "She doesn't answer to that purple grape bitch anymore, dickhead."

Something stung near his collarbone, a tiny nick given to him by the knife. A warning.

"Image my surprise when I heard she was traveling with you, Peter Quill."

"I have wanted to do this for years, ever since the ravagers that you call family robbed me of my whole life's work!" At this, a pain shot through his cheek and a light gasp escaped his mouth.

Peter could only imagine what the ravagers had done to this guy's life, they definitely didn't have a regard for other people's stuff, and that same care extended to what happened to their owners after the fact. And now Peter was about to take the punishment.

"Two for one special then?" He chuckled and was just about to reason with the guy when a screen was whipped around to the front of his face.

It showed his friends, each in separate cells. They were bound and had gags stuffed in their mouths, a guard tugging on the extra thick shackles around Drax's wrists. Gamora seemed to be spitting mad behind her gag, her eyes conveying what her mouth couldn't. Oh, the second she got out of those restraints, every guard in this place was _dead._

As Peter looked closer, he could see faint scrapes and cuts trailing down her shoulders and cheeks, blood running in rivets, disappearing underneath her clothes. Other than that, she seemed... okay. He hoped to whatever being was out there that she would stay that way, that they all would.

_"This will be so, so much fun."_

____________

Days pass. This wasn't the first time Peter had been captured, or tortured, and he was honestly quite used to it and not entirely surprised. This time was different though, because on top of his own pain and torture, he had to endure the punishment of his team, whom he lead into this whole situation in the first place. Maybe if he had done more research on their buyer before, or declined the offer, they would be surfing some intergalactic waves and eating space nachos or something.

The next time Aeraf stepped foot in his cell, an odd look was creeping up his face, a sinister joy.

He sat on a stool placed on Peter's right and used a long arm to swing the screen back into his view for the second time. He observed his friends for the second time since they were captured, they seemed alright, at least they hadn't been beat up as much as he had.

There was suddenly a gun to his head, and he froze, cold metal pressing into his temple.

"Which one should we kill first?"

Peter lunged, arms and legs tearing at his restraints. He growled, fear and anger spreading through his veins. _Not that, anything but that._

"Touch them and I swear, I'll kick your fucking teeth down your throat so hard you'll-" there was his gag, identical to his teammates, shoved in his mouth and he screamed into it with all he had. He tried to bring his fist up to punch the guy but was again restrained, and it felt like the odd static buzzing under his skin would eat him from the inside if his knuckles didn't collide with _something_ in the next few seconds.

Fingers ran through his hair gently and he tried to jerk away, to get as far as possible from this moment. He couldn't pull his eyes away from the screen though, as Aeraf's other hand hovered over the controls. "It's alright, Peter, it'll all be okay. This will be over soon." There was nothing comforting about the words, the fake sympathy oozing from his voice in a way that made his stomach roll.

Peter was having trouble breathing through the gag and his apparent tears, which he had just noticed on his face. He rotated from choked sobs to screams so full of rage he saw red. His throat raw, he thrashed against the hand in his hair and the metal on his wrists. He pleaded and begged and yelled, words muffled and indistinguishable through the dirtied cloth.

It was with the first shot that his heart broke, Rocket's small body falling against the too large chair restraining him. Peter shut his eyes, tears falling unrestrained down his red cheeks...God, not him, he had been through so much..he hated himself for every mean thing he had said to the dude, he really hadn't meant it, Rocket probably hates him for it... hated him for it..

_"This is your fault."_

Another shot and Peter's eyes open just in time to see Drax's body being pulled off the table.

His chest rose and fell with each thundering breath, a rapid inhalation of air that neither Drax nor Rocket would take again.

"God!!! Fuckk, NO!" Peter sobbed harder, if that was even possible, sorrow and hate and guilt pressing hot knives into his chest. This was worse than any torture, than any poisoned blade or electric shock, it felt like every part of his being was alight with agony.

He was sure he wasn't breathing, yet there were sounds of pain still trying to escape his mouth. He osculated between begging and threats, one minute pleading for him to stop, the next to threats of murder. Peter didn't know if his body could take much more, the constant thrashing of his muscles and the pressure in his chest from crying so hard sapped his energy, yet his body still gave more, enough to carry on for millennia.

"Peter..." a singsong voice reached his ears in a hazy echo, "do you know who's next?"

He slammed his back into his chair three times before crumbling, eyes squeezed shut in terror. He was practically vibrating he was shaking so hard. No, no, he couldn't see this, anything but this...

"Open your eyes, Peter Quill." The voice implored sweetly. "For me?"

He kept them shut. Gamora dancing, his arm around her waist, gold light in her eyes... the image went through his mind and he choked on his breath. That couldn't be the last image he had of her, limp and being dragged away from him forever..no- no he couldn't..

_"OPEN THEM!!"_

They shot wide open as the shot rang. The universe fell silent as she hit the chair, dark hair fanning out around her. He couldn't see her face through the veil of curls, but her fingers lay limp and curled at her sides, just brushing the top of her empty gun holster.

There was a heat in his chest equal to the rage of a thousand dying stars, snuffed out in their last moments of an unbelievably long lifetime. A fire was crawling its way out of him. He couldn't stop the flow as it tore through the room, encompassing Aeraf and the guards stationed outside of the door, flowing through the metal in the floor like a river of lava to every Draziri that helped capture them. It killed them all, and he could feel the energy wrapping around their lungs like a vice.

It stopped, the fire, like someone had blown out a candle. Smoke filled the room in a reflection of his mind. His skin still felt like two hundred degrees and he swore the edges of his hair were singed. Even more strangely, his restraints had melted, leaving red, fresh, shining blisters covering his wrists and ankles.

There was no pain, however, as he fell over onto the floor pulling himself to the wall. His legs were weak from unuse, and fresh tears slid down from closed eyes as he sat alone, and so tired that he felt dead.

_


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Peter, we have to go. More guards will be here soon-"
> 
> His fingers pressed into her skin with the delicacy of a butterfly, almost like she would disappear if he pressed too hard.
> 
> "You're alive," He whispered, swallowing hard in his throat.
> 
> She nodded, gripping his waist and helping him stand.
> 
> 'What had they DONE to him?'

It took Gamora three painful minutes to shake off the stun gun, and when she did, the whole place felt like an oven. She ripped at the semi melted cuffs and sprung up from the chair, eyeing the Draziri guards at her feet. They were dead, she knew that much, but she couldn't figure out why.

Peeling open the door to her cell was tough, given the still hot metal handle, but she managed it and peered down a long hallway. Her legs ached but she wasn't spending a second more in that place than she had to.

She peered quickly into each empty cell until she located the one that Rocket was in. She pulled the restraints off and gathered him into her arms, and met up with Drax in the hallway not a minute later. There were several electrical burns marring his skin, which Gamora had seen given over that monitor.

"Where is Peter, we have to get to the ship!" Gamora still had no idea why every Draziri in the place was dead, but she didn't really care. They were almost out.

"We must keep looking for Quill's location."

They pulled open several more doors, and by this time Rocket had shaken off unconsciousness, begrudgingly agreeing to ready the ship and meet up with Groot while they located Peter, the last of their team.

Gamora took in the line of doors and spotted one where the metal was still red-hot with scorch marks radiating out from under it. She flew to open it, grunting at the amount of force it took.

Peter!

He looked awful, skin dusted in black soot and hair flying in all directions. His eyes were unfocused as they stared somewhere into the distance.

She called his name and skidded to him, falling hard on her knees. He seemed shocked, no, stunned, to see her face, and she tried to ignore the odd feeling creeping up her shoulders.  He grounded her, his green eyes concerned and calming her like the most beautiful ocean in the galaxy.

"Peter, we have to go. More guards will be here soon-"

A single tear fell from his chin as he pulled a hand up to rest on her cheek. His fingers pressed into her skin with the delicacy of a butterfly, almost like she would disappear if he pressed too hard.

"You're alive," He whispered, swallowing hard in his throat.

She nodded, gripping his waist and helping him stand.

_What had they done to him?_

_________________

Peter slept for three days.

They had no clue what had happened to him, besides the obvious scabbed-over wounds covering his skin.

Gamora had to reassure him more times than she could count to get him to settle down, eyes glassy and tortured. His skin was still hotter than she knew it should be but he still shivered, shaky hands gripping his forearms. They skimmed through an encyclopedia of Terran illness and afflictions and decided to put him in an ice bath.

This was the second worst decision they had made that week, as the minute that Peter was halfway submerged under the icy water, he lashed out and the back of his palm caught her face. He shot out of the tub and stumbled, his back slamming against the door with a resounding crash that shook the walls and just about Gamora's soul from her body.

During these three days, the rest of them healed, skin knitting over as they processed what happened the last few days; Gamora was anxious and worried and it was all so new, this concern. She couldn't wait for Peter to just wake up so she could be reassured that he really was okay.

It was the opposite of reassuring, Gamora found.

There was screaming, and eyes that held the definition of grief, the look that she's seen in the eyes of so many of the galaxies inhabitants, the empty gaze that reflects back at her when she stares in the mirror in the mornings.

It was several days later that she found Peter sitting on his bed, water dripping from his hair down onto the towel wrapped around his waist.

He looked lost, like he was searching for something in his room that he knew was there. She didn't know what it was that he needed, but was determined to find out. It took lots of careful prodding for Gamora to remind him he could trust her.

"It's- I just.." he pressed his eyes shut, "it's all so violating." A shudder ran up his water-droplet-covered shoulders.

Gamora nodded and tried to be supportive. His voice was so scratchy and it must have been painful to talk like that, she supposed, but hell if she was going to deny him a chance to get to a moment where he could sort through his mind.

"You think you're at least in control of yourself, even if everything else goes to utter shit."

There is no bite behind his cursing, just an empty meaning behind comfort words. Peter was always so much more honest than she, wearing his emotions, being guided by them.

"My blood father used my mother's words to drag me to his side, and now I feel like I have a real textbook case of what Terrans call daddy issues."

Gamora nodded along with his words and swiped her hand over his bedsheet before coming to rest on it. There was still water on his lashes and it was hard to know if it was tears or remnants from the shower. "How so?"

Lips pulled up at the corner and he continued, "The music used to be mine. I thought it was, at least. Ego pulled apart my songs Mom left to me to fit his needs, got into my head-" she noticed then that his hands were clasped into tight fists around themselves and that they were trembling.

"And Aeraf did this as well?" She questioned.

Peter pulled apart his fingers with great effort when he noticed that she had fixed her gaze on them, and shook them out, running them down his face.

"Yeah, yeah in a sense, he did."

"I understand. It is.. it's not fair." Her hair hung over her cheeks, her bun coming loose.

She didn't notice it until Peter tucked a strand behind her ear, his movements and touch the most gentle she had ever seen in her life. Perhaps this is why she cared for Peter so much, because of how kind he could be in such a cruel world and with such a cruel upbringing. Maybe he was the person she wanted to be, a model of forgiveness and vulnerability that she could someday be just a breadths inch away from reaching.

There was a warm breath of air against her cheek and soon Peter was brushing his lips against hers and she was closing her eyes, of course, against her better judgement. He smelled clean, good, and his hand cradled against the side of her head, fingers weaving through her hair.

He pressed his forehead to hers and whispered "I thought you had died. I didn't think I could go on-"

"Nonsense." She spoke firm and clear, a stark contrast to Peter's shaky, croaking voice. "It takes a lot more than that to kill me." A slight smile from both their faces shows, "And I would have trusted that you'd have adequately avenged my death."

Green eyes peered down, and he pulled away ever so slightly. "Speaking of.. that...the fire murder stuff, I guess-" It was weird to see him at a loss for words.

"Shh." She pressed another kiss to his lips before picking up a brush from his night stand, "Another day."

Gamora began pulling the brush through his hair and managed to convince him to dress  _himself_. There was some semblance of the Peter she had met all that time ago, and she left the room with the hope that she could help bring that same fire for life back into his eyes.


End file.
